Marilla Makes Up Her Mind

GET there they did, however, in due season. Mrs. Spencer lived in a big

yellow house at White Sands Cove, and she came to the door with surprise

and welcome mingled on her benevolent face.

“Dear, dear,” she exclaimed, “you’re the last folks I was looking for

today, but I’m real glad to see you. You’ll put your horse in? And how

are you, Anne?”

“I’m as well as can be expected, thank you,” said Anne smilelessly. A

blight seemed to have descended on her.

“I suppose we’ll stay a little while to rest the mare,” said Marilla,

“but I promised Matthew I’d be home early. The fact is, Mrs. Spencer,

there’s been a queer mistake somewhere, and I’ve come over to see where

it is. We sent word, Matthew and I, for you to bring us a boy from the

asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted a boy ten or

eleven years old.”

“Marilla Cuthbert, you don’t say so!” said Mrs. Spencer in distress.

“Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said you

wanted a girl--didn’t she, Flora Jane?” appealing to her daughter who

had come out to the steps.

“She certainly did, Miss Cuthbert,” corroborated Flora Jane earnestly.

“I’m dreadful sorry,” said Mrs. Spencer. “It’s too bad; but it certainly

wasn’t my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did the best I could and I

thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty

thing. I’ve often had to scold her well for her heedlessness.”

“It was our own fault,” said Marilla resignedly. “We should have come

to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along

by word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and

the only thing to do now is to set it right. Can we send the child back

to the asylum? I suppose they’ll take her back, won’t they?”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Spencer thoughtfully, “but I don’t think

it will be necessary to send her back. Mrs. Peter Blewett was up here

yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she’d sent by me

for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Peter has a large family, you know,

and she finds it hard to get help. Anne will be the very girl for her. I

call it positively providential.”

Marilla did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with

the matter. Here was an unexpectedly good chance to get this unwelcome

orphan off her hands, and she did not even feel grateful for it.

She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced

woman without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones. But she had

heard of her. “A terrible worker and driver,” Mrs. Peter was said to

be; and discharged servant girls told fearsome tales of her temper and

stinginess, and her family of pert, quarrelsome children. Marilla felt

a qualm of conscience at the thought of handing Anne over to her tender

mercies.

“Well, I’ll go in and we’ll talk the matter over,” she said.

“And if there isn’t Mrs. Peter coming up the lane this blessed minute!”

exclaimed Mrs. Spencer, bustling her guests through the hall into the

parlor, where a deadly chill struck on them as if the air had been

strained so long through dark green, closely drawn blinds that it had

lost every particle of warmth it had ever possessed. “That is real

lucky, for we can settle the matter right away. Take the armchair,

Miss Cuthbert. Anne, you sit here on the ottoman and don’t wriggle.

Let me take your hats. Flora Jane, go out and put the kettle on. Good

afternoon, Mrs. Blewett. We were just saying how fortunate it was you

happened along. Let me introduce you two ladies. Mrs. Blewett, Miss

Cuthbert. Please excuse me for just a moment. I forgot to tell Flora

Jane to take the buns out of the oven.”

Mrs. Spencer whisked away, after pulling up the blinds. Anne, sitting

mutely on the ottoman, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap,

stared at Mrs. Blewett as one fascinated. Was she to be given into the

keeping of this sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman? She felt a lump coming

up in her throat and her eyes smarted painfully. She was beginning to

be afraid she couldn’t keep the tears back when Mrs. Spencer returned,

flushed and beaming, quite capable of taking any and every difficulty,

physical, mental or spiritual, into consideration and settling it out

of hand.

“It seems there’s been a mistake about this little girl, Mrs. Blewett,”

she said. “I was under the impression that Mr. and Miss Cuthbert wanted

a little girl to adopt. I was certainly told so. But it seems it was a

boy they wanted. So if you’re still of the same mind you were yesterday,

I think she’ll be just the thing for you.”

Mrs. Blewett darted her eyes over Anne from head to foot.

“How old are you and what’s your name?” she demanded.

“Anne Shirley,” faltered the shrinking child, not daring to make any

stipulations regarding the spelling thereof, “and I’m eleven years old.”

“Humph! You don’t look as if there was much to you. But you’re wiry. I

don’t know but the wiry ones are the best after all. Well, if I take you

you’ll have to be a good girl, you know--good and smart and respectful.

I’ll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that. Yes, I

suppose I might as well take her off your hands, Miss Cuthbert. The

baby’s awful fractious, and I’m clean worn out attending to him. If you

like I can take her right home now.”

Marilla looked at Anne and softened at sight of the child’s pale face

with its look of mute misery--the misery of a helpless little creature

who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped.

Marilla felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if she denied the appeal

of that look, it would haunt her to her dying day. Moreover, she did

not fancy Mrs. Blewett. To hand a sensitive, “highstrung” child over to

such a woman! No, she could not take the responsibility of doing that!

“Well, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I didn’t say that Matthew and

I had absolutely decided that we wouldn’t keep her. In fact, I may say

that Matthew is disposed to keep her. I just came over to find out how

the mistake had occurred. I think I’d better take her home again and

talk it over with Matthew. I feel that I oughtn’t to decide on anything

without consulting him. If we make up our mind not to keep her we’ll

bring or send her over to you tomorrow night. If we don’t you may know

that she is going to stay with us. Will that suit you, Mrs. Blewett?”

“I suppose it’ll have to,” said Mrs. Blewett ungraciously.

During Marilla’s speech a sunrise had been dawning on Anne’s face. First

the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope;

her eyes grew deep and bright as morning stars. The child was quite

transfigured; and, a moment later, when Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Blewett

went out in quest of a recipe the latter had come to borrow, she sprang

up and flew across the room to Marilla.

“Oh, Miss Cuthbert, did you really say that perhaps you would let me

stay at Green Gables?” she said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking

aloud might shatter the glorious possibility. “Did you really say it? Or

did I only imagine that you did?”

“I think you’d better learn to control that imagination of yours, Anne,

if you can’t distinguish between what is real and what isn’t,” said

Marilla crossly. “Yes, you did hear me say just that and no more. It

isn’t decided yet and perhaps we will conclude to let Mrs. Blewett take

you after all. She certainly needs you much more than I do.”

“I’d rather go back to the asylum than go to live with her,” said Anne

passionately. “She looks exactly like a--like a gimlet.”

Marilla smothered a smile under the conviction that Anne must be

reproved for such a speech.

“A little girl like you should be ashamed of talking so about a lady and

a stranger,” she said severely. “Go back and sit down quietly and hold

your tongue and behave as a good girl should.”

“I’ll try to do and be anything you want me, if you’ll only keep me,”

said Anne, returning meekly to her ottoman.

When they arrived back at Green Gables that evening Matthew met them in

the lane. Marilla from afar had noted him prowling along it and guessed

his motive. She was prepared for the relief she read in his face when

he saw that she had at least brought Anne back with her. But she said

nothing, to him, relative to the affair, until they were both out in

the yard behind the barn milking the cows. Then she briefly told him

Anne’s history and the result of the interview with Mrs. Spencer.

“I wouldn’t give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman,” said Matthew with

unusual vim.

“I don’t fancy her style myself,” admitted Marilla, “but it’s that

or keeping her ourselves, Matthew. And, since you seem to want her, I

suppose I’m willing--or have to be. I’ve been thinking over the idea

until I’ve got kind of used to it. It seems a sort of duty. I’ve never

brought up a child, especially a girl, and I dare say I’ll make a

terrible mess of it. But I’ll do my best. So far as I’m concerned,

Matthew, she may stay.”

Matthew’s shy face was a glow of delight.

“Well now, I reckoned you’d come to see it in that light, Marilla,” he

said. “She’s such an interesting little thing.”

“It’d be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little

thing,” retorted Marilla, “but I’ll make it my business to see she’s

trained to be that. And mind, Matthew, you’re not to go interfering with

my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn’t know much about bringing up

a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor. So you just

leave me to manage her. When I fail it’ll be time enough to put your oar

in.”

“There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way,” said Matthew

reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to her as you can without

spoiling her. I kind of think she’s one of the sort you can do anything

with if you only get her to love you.”

Marilla sniffed, to express her contempt for Matthew’s opinions

concerning anything feminine, and walked off to the dairy with the

pails.

“I won’t tell her tonight that she can stay,” she reflected, as she

strained the milk into the creamers. “She’d be so excited that she

wouldn’t sleep a wink. Marilla Cuthbert, you’re fairly in for it. Did

you ever suppose you’d see the day when you’d be adopting an orphan

girl? It’s surprising enough; but not so surprising as that Matthew

should be at the bottom of it, him that always seemed to have such a

mortal dread of little girls. Anyhow, we’ve decided on the experiment

and goodness only knows what will come of it.”